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This is the 98th meeting between these two teams in the top flight – only HSV vs. Bremen has been played more often (100 times).

Hamburg lead the head-to-head with 42 wins to Stuttgart’s 34 (21 draws) and haven’t celebrated more wins against any other club. The encounter earlier this season ended in a 3-3 draw.

Stuttgart haven’t won in 10 games (D2, L8); a run they last suffered between March and May 1999. VfB have only waited longer for a top-flight win once before: 13 games in the first half of the 1966/67 season.

Hamburg have collected seven points from their four matches under Slomka, although their only away game in that run ended in defeat (1-0 in Bremen).

Tallies of 21 and 23 points for VfB and HSV respectively confirm this as both clubs’ worst ever Bundesliga season (after 25 games; partially converted to the 3-points-per-win system).

Only Hoffenheim (56) have conceded more goals than HSV (54) and Stuttgart (52).

Stuttgart have conceded in the final 15 minutes in eight of their nine matches so far in 2014 (10 times in total), costing them points in seven of those games – 13 in total.

Since their 4-0 win in Braunschweig (September), VfB have failed to keep a clean sheet in 18 games. They have only had a run like that once before: Stuttgart conceded in 21 successive Bundesliga games in 1969. They have already set a new club record by going 15 home games without a clean sheet.

Hakan Calhanoglu has scored three of HSV’s last four goals and had 10 shots in the match against Nürnberg – a league high this season. His teammate Pierre-Michel Lasogga could make his 50th Bundesliga appearance this weekend in Stuttgart (19 goals so far).

VfB manager Huub Stevens was in the HSV dugout between February 2007 and June 2008. In 2007, he took the club from 18th place to seventh (and into the Intertoto Cup), and also secured a fourth-place finish with them in the following campaign.